{"id":12325,"date":"2016-11-04T16:22:10","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/coca-cola-taking-the-air-right-out-of-bubbling-climate-change-issues\/"},"modified":"2016-11-04T16:23:38","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:23:38","slug":"coca-cola-taking-the-air-right-out-of-bubbling-climate-change-issues","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/coca-cola-taking-the-air-right-out-of-bubbling-climate-change-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Coca-Cola: Taking the air right out of bubbling climate change issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global warming is affecting the world in unimaginable ways. Droughts are commonplace, resources are scarce, and globally we are facing unpredictable and massive storms. Not only is this bad for the environment, but its effects are transcending weather trends and greatly impacting corporations and economies at large. Because of the global nature of our economies today, we can\u2019t turn a blind eye to issues internationally; international concerns can have catastrophic impacts for US-based companies. For Coca-Cola, it wasn\u2019t until 2004 when they lost significant business in India due to a local water shortage, they quickly realized how dire this situation could be and jumped into action.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

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What Coca-Cola quickly realized in 2004 is that while they would be impacted by many issues related to global warming, sustainable access to clean water is pertinent to future success. Not only is water the main ingredient in their beverages, but it is also a critical component of the manufacturing processes, a key input to agriculture for other raw materials, and the communities where they bottle the products are also their end consumers, so they have a vested interest in keeping these communities thriving.[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 Their action planning included setting some ambitious goals; in 2007 Coca-Cola defined one of their goals as \u201creplenishing every liter of water used in its global sales volume and production by the end of 2020.\u201d[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Now let\u2019s flash-forward to current-day, 2016. No-one could have predicted this rapid success, but in August, Coca-Cola announced that they achieved this ambitious target 5 years ahead of schedule. In fact, just last year, Coca-Cola replenished 191.9 billion liters of water, representing 115% of the water it took out of these communities.[iv]<\/a> Coca-Cola has achieved this replenishment goal by supporting 248 community water projects across 71 countries, impacting 2,000 communities.[v]<\/a> These projects have been in partnership with a variety of partners including the World Wildlife Fund, USAID, The Nature Conservancy, CARE and UNDP[vi]<\/a> and have a focus along one of the following four objectives:<\/p>\n